


this kind of love never lasts

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (...sort of), Comfort Sex, Complicated Relationships, Consent Issues, Dirty Talk, Dissociation, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Pre-Bastardly Actions Jonah Magnus, Sex, The Lonely - Freeform, Trans Jonah Magnus, Trans Male Character, Under-negotiated Kink, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:20:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24041968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Jonah Magnus asks Mordechai for assistance in retrieving Barnabas Bennett's body from the Lonely, and gets more than he bargained for.
Relationships: Barnabas Bennett/Jonah Magnus, Mordechai Lukas/Jonah Magnus
Comments: 5
Kudos: 89
Collections: Associated Articles Regarding One Jonah Magnus





	this kind of love never lasts

“I hope you’re not here to bargain,” Mordechai said, when he opened the door to Jonah. “You’re too late.”

The Lukases we’re never ones for small talk.

Jonah took a stuttering breath. “I wasn’t intending to beg for his life. I just want to know what happened.”

Mordechai made a low sound, almost a laugh. “That’s not what your eyes say.”

“It’s what the _Eye_ says,” Jonah retorted, hoping his tenuous smirk held up under Mordechai’s cold gaze.

Mordechai stepped back, letting Jonah into the antechamber of the Lukas mansion. “You’re learning.”

“Always,” Jonah replied. He shivered. “There’s so much to know.”

“You want to know how the Lonely functions, then?” Mordechai stepped up to one of the doorways leading off the entrance hall and waved his hand. The fog that coiled around at ankle-height like a particularly fluid shag carpet rose up at his gesture, flattening itself into the doorway. “Right this way.”

Jonah made a deliberate effort not to chew his lip as he stepped after Mordechai into the Lonely. Another shiver wracked him as he entered—however cold the Lukas mansion was, it was colder here.

“Time moves quicker here, relative to the world we just came from,” Mordechai was saying. He strode through the fog as if the chill had not touched him, arms clasped behind his back. Jonah hurried to keep up.

“What _is_ here?” Jonah asked. They weren’t in the Lukas mansion any longer, but he did recognize the place. They were by the ocean, near Dover. If there hadn’t been the pervasive fog, Jonah was sure he could have seen France across the strait. 

“It is a reflection of our world,” Mordechai replied, lifting his voice over the sound of waves. “Empty of people. It can be entered and exited from anywhere, and can take the form of anywhere, if you look hard enough, but it naturally shapes itself along bodies of water.”

Jonah wheezed slightly. “That’s fascinating. You have control over where you appear when you enter and leave it, I assume.”

Mordechai nodded, slowing his pace just a hair. “With practice.”

“Where’s—” Jonah cut himself off with a huff. “Where _was_ Barnabas?”

“In the beginning, at his home, where he felt most anchored to himself. Later on, in his desperation, he wandered, searching for any other soul. At the end…” Mordechai kicked at a patch of the fog as though nudging foliage out of the way. “Here.”

Whatever Jonah had been expecting to see, it wasn’t bone.

A body, perhaps. Intact, or rotted. Not a skeleton, washed clean by the waves and bleached white by the sun.

“Barnabas,” Jonah choked. He pressed a fist to his mouth and whirled on his heel, staring into the fog as he composed himself.

“It wasn’t painful,” Mordechai said, and if Jonah hadn’t known better, he would have thought there was humor in his voice. “That’s the benefit of the Lonely. The pain is quiet. There is only peace.”

Jonah took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his eyes. He took a slow, deep breath. “How long?”

Without looking, Jonah knew Mordechai was shrugging. “I can’t be certain without having been there. The ratio changes regularly.”

Jonah turned back. He knelt down in the strangely spongy sand, picking up what might have been Barnabas’ femur. Not all the bones were there. Some of the smaller ones had been washed away by the tides, unrecoverable.

There was enough left, though, to conceptualize Barnabas. To hold a scrap of him, reminding himself that the price would be paid. It would always have to be paid.

A hand closed around Jonah’s upper arm.

“Up you get,” Mordechai said. “We can’t be losing too much time here. I can control the time dilation only to a certain extent.”

Jonah stripped off his coat, no matter that he was so cold he shook even with it on, gathering Barnabas’ bones onto the fabric. He wrapped the bundle up, took it in his arms, and let Mordechai lift him to his feet.

He was still hugging the bones to his chest when they emerged from the Lonely. Mordechai was, unsurprisingly, perfectly composed, but Jonah could feel himself shaking.

He expected to be turned out of the house, now that he had retrieved his parcel and sated his curiosity, but Mordechai took Jonah’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting his face up to look at him.

“You’re very fragile, for an avatar,” Mordechai said, not unkindly. “Come with me.”

Jonah knew an offer when he heard it. His head told him to refuse, to walk home, that Mordechai couldn’t be trusted.

No one could be trusted.

Jonah followed Mordechai up the stairs. It was warmer there, but only just. Jonah’s whole body shook—shivering or trembling, who could know.

When they reached what must have been Mordechai’s bedroom, Mordechai turned, reaching out to take the bones from Jonah’s arms. Jonah hugged his bundle closer on instinct.

Mordechai raised a thick eyebrow. Jonah, uncowed, set Barnabas’ bones, still wrapped in his coat, down on the writing desk. He lifted his chin. “Well?”

Mordechai kissed him.

Jonah flailed his hands, and latched on to Mordechai’s lapels. He knew what was happening. Mordechai was feeding off Jonah’s loneliness. For all his curiosity, despite the fact that he’d chosen this, Barnabas’ death was still a stab of pain with every breath.

Jonah kissed back. He hauled himself up, wrapping his legs around Mordechai’s waist, letting himself be carried to the bed.

“How do you want it?” Mordechai asked, his voice low.

Jonah shut his eyes. “I don’t care.”

Mordechai unbuttoned Jonah’s shirt. His fingers traced the boning of Jonah’s modified corset. down to the jut of Jonah’s hips, starting to undo the laces of his trousers. “Pick something.”

Jonah squirmed. “I would appreciate—” he cut himself off with a gasp as Mordechai yanked down his trousers, thick fingers slipping into the gap in his underwear to stroke his slit.

“Use your words,” Mordechai insisted, keeping two fingers pressed against Jonah’s folds as he unbuttoned Jonah’s pants with the other hand.

“Fill me,” Jonah choked. “Fill me, please, Mordechai.”

Mordechai’s huff of breath was almost distinguishable as a laugh, but Jonah couldn’t be sure. “You’re greedy, aren’t you?”

Jonah’s chest heaved under his corset. He wanted to shut his eyes, but he knew he’d lose himself if he did.

Mordechai’s thumb found Jonah’s cock. “Answer me, Jonah.”

“Yes,” Jonah mewled, rocking his hips into Mordechai’s hand. “Yes, I am.”

“You’re what?” Mordechai switched hands, lifting the fingers damp with Jonah’s slick to his mouth, while keeping pressure on Jonah’s cock.

“Greedy,” Jonah answered. “I’m greedy, I want to be filled, I—”

Mordechai took his fingers from his mouth. He slipped one into Jonah’s hole, still circling Jonah’s cock with his opposite thumb. “This isn’t enough for you, is it?”

Jonah shook his head. “No. I need more, I always need more.”

Mordechai slipped his second finger in, scissoring them slowly. “You’re slick enough. I’m sure you could take a cock just like this. Your Barnabas—”

“Don’t.” Jonah snapped.

Mordechai just looked at him. “Your Barnabas would just fill you up right here, wouldn’t he? Give you just what you wanted. He was so good to you, that boy.”

“Please,” Jonah whispered. “Please, Mordechai. Please…”

“I think you can wait a little longer,” Mordechai added a third finger, working them deeper and deeper until Jonah’s pleas disappeared into mewling.

Jonah was shaking. He kept shaking until Mordechai covered him with his body, holding Jonah down as he fucked him, first with his fingers and then with his cock.

Despite the chill of his home and his domain, Mordechai’s skin was warm. His weight held Jonah steady against the mattress until the chill seeped away.

“You like this,” Mordechai murmured, holding Jonah by one hip and the opposite shoulder. “Filled. Pinned. _Used._ Can you see how you look, Jonah? Small and pathetic, _needy_.”

Jonah came with a whine, clenching down on Mordechai’s cock.

He expected to be fucked through his aftershocks, until Mordechai came himself, but Mordechai pulled out, dragging two fingers lazily through Jonah’s wet folds. “Good boy. Do you feel better?”

He didn’t. Jonah felt as though Mordechai had cut a hole through his chest, left of center, jabbing pins into his heart with every word.

“Yes.” Jonah squirmed free of Mordechai’s weight, pulling his clothes back on. He could barely breathe, but he didn’t loosen his corset. “Thank you for your… assistance, Mordechai. This venture has been… fulfilling.”

Mordechai huffed his not-laugh. “Take care, Jonah.”

Jonah gathered up his coat, bundling fabric and bones against his chest. He felt the press of the thin, rounded edge of a bone—a fibula, maybe. If it had been a blade, it would have gone right between two of his ribs.

He didn’t remember walking home. He didn’t remember having a hot bath drawn. His next memory was of sitting in lukewarm water, still shaking. Barnabas’ skull watched him from the countertop, empty eye sockets staring with no accusation, just a disappointed grief.

Jonah lifted himself from the water, dried himself off, wrapped himself in a dressing gown, and went to bed early, once he’d stored Barnabas’ bones in a cedar chest.

He laid in the dark, eyes open. There was a yawning, freezing pit in his chest, and it had nothing to do with his venture into the Lonely.

He had made his choice. He had decided what was important, and it wasn’t a tenuous connection to humanity. It wasn’t Barnabas.

Jonah could live with loneliness. He had to. Immortality was very lonely, after all.


End file.
